Pubdate: Wed, 14 Feb 2001
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2001 Houston Chronicle
Contact:  Viewpoints Editor, P.O. Box 4260 Houston, Texas 77210-4260
Fax: (713) 220-3575
Website: http://www.chron.com/
Forum: http://www.chron.com/content/hcitalk/index.html
Author: Carlos Fuentes
Note: Fuentes, Mexico's most prominent writer, is most recently author of 
The Years With Laura Diaz.

FOUR KEY TOPICS THAT DEFINE U.S.-MEXICO AGENDA

The new presidents of Mexico and the United States are simultaneously 
beginning their administrations. It is worth noting that Mexican President 
Vicente Fox has a clear, popular mandate, while George W. Bush occupies the 
White House under a cloud of suspicion, having lost the popular vote but 
having won the election, thanks to five U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Yet, the real news lies elsewhere: Never has the relationship between 
Mexico and the United States been closer. After a century and a half of 
often regrettable confrontations, Presidents Lazaro Cardenas and Franklin 
D. Roosevelt took a new path. When Cardenas' government nationalized U.S. 
oil companies in Mexico in 1938, Roosevelt did not send in the Marines. 
Instead, he negotiated, and Mexico agreed to compensate the oil companies. 
There have been other problems between Mexico and the United States since 
then, but it will always be possible to resolve them through negotiation. 
In general, this principle has predominated, and it is one that suits both 
countries. Canny, old Don Luis Cabrera, an early 20th-century agrarian 
theorist, stated it well when he said: "On the battlefield, the gringos 
will always defeat us; at the negotiating table, we always have the advantage."

Four principal items define the Mexico-U.S. agenda. All four will come up 
when Fox and Bush meet Friday in Guanajuato, Mexico.

Drugs. The elimination of the insulting U.S. annual process of 
certification and decertification is the first step toward better antidrug 
collaboration with Mexico. It is impossible for the United States and its 
estimated 14.8 million illicit-drug users to judge or condemn countries 
like Colombia and Mexico that are only responding ("Long live the free 
market!") to North American demand.

Beyond this unbearable Manicheism lies a proposal by Jorge G. Castaneda, 
Fox's foreign minister: Evaluate what has worked and what has not worked in 
current strategies; consider how the markets can be influenced and price 
mechanisms juggled to make narco-traffic less lucrative, and thus lessen 
both profits and corruption. On the other hand, U.S. demands against capos 
and their mafias in Mexico should be matched by U.S. action against drug 
lords and their mafias in the United States.

At the end of the road, there is only one solution to this terrible scourge 
that affects us all: Legalize, or decriminalize, the use of drugs. The 
problem is, this would have to be a global decision, without exception. The 
benefit is that even though drug addicts would continue to exist, no one 
would become rich through their sufferings. That is what happened when 
Prohibition was repealed in the United States in 1933. There continued to 
be drunks, but there were no more Al Capones.

Labor. The flow of Mexican workers to the United States is the result of 
two factors: the absence of employment in Mexico and the need for labor in 
the United States. Our workers do jobs that no one else wants to do. 
Without them, there would be less food, services and fiscal resources in 
the United States. Mexican-American workers pay taxes and contribute $28 
billion annually to the U.S. economy. They also send $6 billion home annually.

But beyond the economic data, these workers are exactly that -- workers, 
not criminals. They are bearers of human rights and culture. They deserve 
protection and respect. They deserve, in the case of the undocumented, a 
new U.S. amnesty law, and while the two new governments are negotiating new 
accords, they should consider a program modeled on the German gastarbeiten, 
or guest-worker program.

In any event, the indispensable presence of the Mexican worker in the 
United States should not be subject to the internal gyrations of the U.S. 
economy. In California, former Gov. Pete Wilson used immigrant workers as 
scapegoats for the state's difficult transition from a military-based, Cold 
War economy to a post-industrial, high-technology one. Alan Greenspan, 
chairman of the Federal Reserve, recently said the United States needs to 
import workers to keep its economy, which in 2000 reached its highest 
degree of expansion in 50 years, growing. Now, with the United States at 
the portals of a mini-recession, what will Greenspan say? What will Bush 
say with respect to the power of the migratory work force? And what will 
Fox say, considering that his long-term objective is that, in a globalized 
world, not only merchandise should circulate freely, but also people; not 
only things, but also workers?

Trade. Thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico has become 
the eighth-largest exporter in the world, with a jump in exports from about 
$40 billion in 1993 to $110 billion in 1999. In the last six years, trade 
between Mexico and the United States has grown 113 percent, making Mexico 
the second-largest trade partner of the United States, after Canada. 
Bilateral trade between Mexico and the United States grows at such a high 
rate that, by 2004, it should exceed that between the United States and Europe.

How will the U.S. mini-recession affect its economic relationship with 
Mexico? The wave of layoffs in the last few weeks has already hit 
DaimlerChrysler of Mexico. During the last few days, while visiting Los 
Angeles and New York, I witnessed once again the dynamic of the North 
American economy: The velocity of technological development is so 
impressive that it can be said that the United States is entering a period 
of fewer employees and better employment. Yet, there remains enough pent-up 
demand to absorb the unemployed. Nonetheless, an economic sneeze in the 
United States can mean pneumonia for Mexico.

At the Iberoamerican Forum held in Mexico City last November, Mexican 
entrepreneur Carlos Slim rightly underscored the U.S. economy's need for 
Latin American markets that can absorb its products. That requires, added 
Slim, long-term financing for Latin American countries guided toward the 
creation of infrastructure, housing, agricultural production and the growth 
of goods and technological services. That is, the United States requires 
ever more prosperous, well-nourished and educated Mexican and Latin 
American markets in order to ensure its own economic health.

Energy. This theme may dominate the Bush-Fox meeting in view of the growing 
energy crisis in the United States. Prices go up, and energy declines. 
California seems on the verge of being left in the dark. An enormous 
blackout threatens the Northeast this summer. The need for electrical power 
grows at the rate of 6 percent annually in the United States. Bush will 
propose a common North American energy market. Fox will offer a new vision 
of border cooperation concerning electricity and natural gas, which could 
end up forcing Mexico's Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission to be 
both public and efficient.

Fox's electoral triumph gives Mexico democratic honorability in the eyes of 
both the U.S. government and the American people. If with the governments 
of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which cast so much authoritarian 
suspicion on Mexico, Mexican diplomacy won its victories with bravura 
alone, today, more than ever, we can negotiate with the gringos with pride, 
discretion and legitimacy.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager